Chet Sharma: chef, DJ, PhD

Chet Sharma – physicist, DJ and award-winning chef – only needs to sleep for four hours a night. “I inherited [this gift] from my mother,” shrugs the Londoner when we talk one morning before lunchtime service at his restaurant, BiBi. “She has unlimited energy!”

Raised in Berkshire, England, to parents with Indian heritage, Sharma has a master’s degree in clinical and experimental medicine from University College London, as well as a master’s in physics and a PhD in condensed-matter physics from the University of Oxford. It was during those seven years studying that he also moonlighted as a cook and a DJ.

“I’d do university in the morning, dinner service at a restaurant [at night], and at 11 p.m. I’d cool down and clean up and do DJing for an hour or two,” recalls the 37-year-old.

Sharma made money spinning discs at London’s feted Ministry of Sound and other venues – eventually playing with the likes of Kanye West and Sean Paul – while also completing no less than 16 stagiaires as a trainee cook in different kitchens, including the Michelin-starred Benares and Locanda Locatelli. Within two days of finishing his studies, he moved to Spain to work under the legendary Andoni Luiz Aduriz at the two-Michelin-starred Mugaritz.

The decision to concentrate on a career in food was cemented when he saw his academic supervisor bent over a desk, filling in grant applications on a weekend evening. “I realized I can’t think of something I want to do less than write a grant application on Sunday night. But I had no problem being in a restaurant on a Sunday night. If I was going to be good at something it should be the thing I was actually obsessed with,” he told the Observer.

Luckily, Sharma had won scholarships to both UCL and Oxford – meaning he had no debt (he declined an offer to do a PhD at Harvard due to the eye-watering cost). “So, making the move to restaurants – it was risky but financially it wasn’t crazy,” he says. Plus, his parents were supportive. His mother, a long-time Air India employee, and his father, an accountant turned magistrate, just wanted him to be happy. “My parents were really, really understanding – they said you go and do what you need to do. And be good at it.”

Good is an understatement. Sharma is chef-patron at the intimate restaurant BiBi, tucked away on a pretty street in the fancy west-London neighborhood of Mayfair. It opened in late 2021 to a slew of awards, including, in 2022 alone, Opening of the Year at the National Restaurant Awards; GQ Restaurant of the Year; and Menu of the Year at the Cateys. “This is a clever little restaurant, with a very clever menu,” gushed a review in the Infatuation.

Today, Sharma does use his scientific training – but not in the way you’d think.

“I don’t have ambitions to become the next Heston Blumenthal,” he says. “Understanding what happens two seconds after the Big Bang is not really going to help me when I’m grilling a piece of fish over charcoal!” But, he asserts, “I do have a more logical way of thinking that has made me a more efficient chef.”

In Urdu, BiBi translates as “lady of the house.” The name is a homage to Sharma’s maternal lineage. While the spirit and flavors are Indian, the preparation and presentation are experimental, often drawing on Sharma’s European training. Elements from the household Sharma grew up in are presented, but always with a twist: “The dishes are not home dishes – they’re way too involved and way too complex.”

The addition of Mason & Co’s Pondicherry chocolate – sourced from Tamil Nadu in Southern India (“it’s super aromatic and floral and complex”) – is also a homage, of sorts. Sharma’s grandmother spent decades at the Mars chocolate factory in Slough, England, fixing vending machines. “My grandmother dropped out of school at 12 or 13, got married at 15, had kids at 16 and was widowed at 18,” he says. “Growing up we got lots of free chocolate – it was good!”

Sharma buys all BiBi’s fresh ingredients exclusively from British farms – except for their single-origin Indian spices. To source these, he spent nine months in 2019 traveling around India, meeting every individual producer. It was important to “move away from the mass-market commodity stuff that just ends up tasting of cardboard.”

What is critical is introducing indigenous Indian ingredients that aren’t usually associated with the cuisine, such as lemongrass. “We use it in our petit fours: we have a little jelly made from carrots and toss it in this dried lemongrass sugar – like a classy fruit pastel!” he laughs.  

Those standards – local ingredients, Indian spices, food made with an inventive (sometimes tongue-in-cheek) twist – will all be present this July, when Sharma travels to New York to collaborate on a two-night pop-up at Tribeca’s l’abeille restaurant. Working with executive chef Mitsunobu Nagae, Sharma will create a tasting menu that mixes l’abeille’s French Japanese haute cuisine (poached oysters, foie grass and Japanese eel) with BiBi’s Indian.

“It is really interesting to try and combine Indian cuisine with our French Japanese concept,” l’abeille’s co-owner Howard Chang tells The Spectator World. “The flavors are quite strong really. But [Sharma] takes a very modern approach to Indian food.”

One stand-out dish will be the roasted Peking duck, dry-aged for one week and served with a fig compete made with red wine, white sesame and duck sauce. While those elements are very much Nagae’s, Sharma will provide a kulcha, or Indian flatbread, with duck leg meat wrapped in dough and baked. There will also be a course of the household staple khichdi. “The khichdi is a bit like a savory porridge made of millet, sorghum and some Anson Mills grits, all finished with black truffle and the first of the season’s sweetcorn,” he explains.

For Sharma, the visit is a chance to help expand inventive Indian cuisine in New York. “London is the best city in the world for Indian restaurants,” he elaborates, citing the United Kingdom’s long (and not always complementary) history with India. “The Indian movement is making its way to New York, but it’s not London yet. Of course not.” 

Still, he believes Londoners can learn a thing or two about cocktails from New Yorkers. BiBi’s many American patrons have inspired Sharma to develop a more complex – and challenging – cocktail list. While the Brits tend to drink wine during a meal, Americans “drink cocktails all night,” he has observed. The rehaul saw BiBi win Cocktail List of the Year at this year’s London Restaurant Awards for drinks including an old fashioned that mixes salted treacle with Eagle Rare 10-Year-Old and a Negroni made with toasted coffee.

“We weren’t paying attention to the midmeal cocktail – the high ball that gets you through the whole meal,” he expands, citing a jasmine spritz mixed with west-country cider eau de vie, jasmine tea and the traditional South Indian drink Nannari Sarbath.

As for the future, BiBi: The Cookbook comes out in October. “I’m not shy about saying I want to do more books in the future – however painful that process is. I’m a bookworm, I’m a nerd at heart!” Sharma would also love to open more restaurants – in London, Milan, Paris, Tokyo or New York. Eventually, that is. 

As Sharma reminds me, he’s still not yet 40. “There’s no rush,” he smiles. “I’ve got time.”

Chet Sharma will be cooking at l’abeille in New York on July 16 and 17.